Later life, inequality and sociological theory

A central concern of many theorists of later life has been to elucidate the processes which shape the marginalisation and relative disadvantage of older people in contemporary society. This concern parallels a current argument within sociological theorising: that life course stage and generational location constitute increasingly important dimensions of social difference and inequality. It is an argument of the paper that many current approaches operate with metaphors of society which ultimately locate those in later life at the margins by virtue of the theoretical terms being used. Too much has been claimed for life course-based divisions and too little has been claimed in respect of life course-related processes. The paper develops an alternative, moral economy, perspective with the aim of furthering analysis of the social organisation of life course-related rights, claims and obligations and their relationship to lifetime inequalities across the population. Such an approach offers a resourceful framework both for interrogating the diverse circumstances and experiences of those in later life, and for conceptualising social inequality and its reproduction

The social patterning of values and rationalities: mothers' choices in combining caring and employment

The assumption of individualised rationality runs through the two dominant theorisations of family behaviour – new household economics and individualisation. We demonstrate the inaccuracy of this assumption, using the results of two CAVA projects into mothers' perceptions and choices in combining mothering with paid work, in allocating tasks with partners, and in choosing childcare. Rather, mothers make such decisions within socially negotiated accounts of what is morally adequate, and we go on to show how these decisions and the values informing them are socially patterned by class and ethnicity. Finally, we consider how both theory and policy can make a ‘rationality mistake’ in neglecting the importance of social ties and moral responsibilities in family life

Controlled visibility device for an aircraft Patent

Controlled visibility device for simulating poor visibility conditions in training pilots in instrument landing and flight procedure

Weak Lensing Mass Reconstruction: Flexion vs Shear

Weak gravitational lensing has proven to be a powerful tool to map directly the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. The technique, currently used, relies on the accurate measurement of the gravitational shear that corresponds to the first-order distortion of the background galaxy images. More recently, a new technique has been introduced that relies on the accurate measurement of the gravitational flexion that corresponds to the second-order distortion of the background galaxy images. This technique should probe structures on smaller scales than that of a shear analysis. The goal of this paper is to compare the ability of shear and flexion to reconstruct the dark matter distribution by taking into account the dispersion in shear and flexion measurements. Our results show that the flexion is less sensitive than shear for constructing the convergence maps on scales that are physically feasible for mapping, meaning that flexion alone not be used to do convergence map reconstruction, even on small scales.Comment: Submitted to Ap

Summary of XB-70 airplane cockpit environmental data

Thermal, acoustical, and acceleration environments of XB-70 airplane crew compartment in airworthiness test

A photometric and astrometric investigation of the brown dwarfs in Blanco 1

We present the results of a photometric and astrometric study of the low mass stellar and substellar population of the young open cluster Blanco 1. We have exploited J band data, obtained recently with the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) on the United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope (UKIRT), and 10 year old I and z band optical imaging from CFH12k and Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), to identify 44 candidate low mass stellar and substellar members, in an area of 2 sq. degrees, on the basis of their colours and proper motions. This sample includes five sources which are newly discovered. We also confirm the lowest mass candidate member of Blanco 1 unearthed so far (29MJup). We determine the cluster mass function to have a slope of alpha=+0.93, assuming it to have a power law form. This is high, but nearly consistent with previous studies of the cluster (to within the errors), and also that of its much better studied northern hemisphere analogue, the Pleiades.Comment: 8 Pages, 5 Figures, 2 Tables and 1 Appendix. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Trade costs, 1870–2000

What has driven trade booms and trade busts in the past century and a half? Was it changes in global output or in the costs of international trade? To address this question, we derive a micro-founded measure of aggregate bilateral trade costs based on a standard model of trade in differentiated goods. These trade costs gauge the difference between observed bilateral trade and frictionless trade in terms of an implied markup on retail prices of foreign goods. Thus, we are able to estimate the combined magnitude of tariffs, transportation costs, and all other macroeconomic frictions that impede international trade but that are inherently difficult to observe. We use this measure to examine the growth of global trade between 1870 and 1913, its retreat from 1921 to 1939, and its subsequent rise from 1950 to 2000. We find that trade cost declines explain roughly 55 percent of the pre–World War I trade boom and 33 percent of the post–World War II trade boom, while a precipitous rise in trade costs explains the entire interwar trade bust

Hard X-ray Emission from the M87 AGN Detected with NuSTAR

M87 hosts a 3-6 billion solar mass black hole with a remarkable relativistic jet that has been regularly monitored in radio to TeV bands. However, hard X-ray emission \gtrsim 10keV, which would be expected to primarily come from the jet or the accretion flow, had never been detected from its unresolved X-ray core. We report NuSTAR detection up to 40 keV from the the central regions of M87. Together with simultaneous Chandra observations, we have constrained the dominant hard X-ray emission to be from its unresolved X-ray core, presumably in its quiescent state. The core spectrum is well fitted by a power law with photon index Gamma=2.11 (+0.15 -0.11). The measured flux density at 40 keV is consistent with a jet origin, although emission from the advection-dominated accretion flow cannot be completely ruled out. The detected hard X-ray emission is significantly lower than that predicted by synchrotron self-Compton models introduced to explain emission above a GeV.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, updated to better match the published version in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. A minor typo in the published version (angular scale should be 1 arcsec = 78 pc instead, no result of the paper is affected) is fixed her

A near zero velocity dispersion stellar component in the Canes Venatici dwarf spheroidal galaxy

We present a spectroscopic survey of the newly-discovered Canes Venatici dwarf galaxy using the Keck/DEIMOS spectrograph. Two stellar populations of distinct kinematics are found to be present in this galaxy: an extended, metal-poor component, of half-light radius 7'.8(+2.4/-2.1), which has a velocity dispersion of 13.9(+3.2/-2.5) km/s, and a more concentrated (half-light radius 3'.6(+1.1/-0.8) metal-rich component of extremely low velocity dispersion. At 99% confidence, the upper limit to the central velocity dispersion of the metal-rich population is 1.9 km/s. This is the lowest velocity dispersion ever measured in a galaxy. We perform a Jeans analysis on the two components, and find that the dynamics of the structures can only be consistent if we adopt extreme (and unlikely) values for the scale length and velocity dispersion of the metal-poor population. With a larger radial velocity sample and improved measurements of the density profile of the two populations, we anticipate that it will be possible to place strong constraints on the central distribution of the dark matter in this galaxy.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, accepted by MNRA